Amid a wave of protests, the arch-reactionary government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban imposed a cuton the workers' rights by a law that became popularly known as the "law of slavery." The measure, which was approved on December 12 and promulgated on December 20, allows monopolies to compel workers to accumulate 400 extra hours a year and only pay them in parts over a three-year period.
Previously, the labor law limited the amount of overtime by 250 a year, and the limit for the bourgeois to pay them was 12 months. What was already absurd in itself was aggravated and thus awakened the Hungarian masses. Previously, Viktor Orban had already hardened the conditions for a strike to be considered "legal" and lowered the rates for monopolies and multinationals - today Hungary's taxation is the lowest in the "European Union."
The brutal onslaught on the rights of the proletarian class - which raises the level of exploitation absurdly, giving the big capitalists an even more systematic accumulation of capital - faced resistance from the popular and working class movement. General strike and roadblocks were considered by the trade union movement.
Violent protests against this measure and against Viktor Orban government occured throughout the month of December in general. In Budapest, on 21/12, thousands marched in the center to repudiate the prime minister's draconian move. Already on 16/12, before the promulgation of the measure, 15 thousand people gathered in the same place.
Besides the measure - which was the fuse and launched thousands of proletarians in the movement - the masses also react to the intense process of reactionarization of the old Hungarian semi-colonial state. Viktor Orban applies a severe control to the country's public press – which, in theory, should serve as an instrument of "public power" for communication with the population - and uses it as a tool for political propaganda. In addition, his anti-immigrant speech and the growing centralization of political power in his hands generate the restriction of fundamental rights in the masses.
"I am against this suffocating political situation," says a protesting lady to the Euronews portal.
In the absence of a consistent political force, some of the demonstrators harbor illusions about the "European Union" and a "liberal democracy" as opposed to the centralizing government of Orban, not seeing that their measures and regime are an imposition and necessity of the imperialist monopolies.
Translated from AND.
